Get Happy Or Die Trying In Roguelikelike Gonner
From the Hets chap
You may remember developer Ditto from the colourful exploration of Planeter (which unfortunately doesn't seem to be available anymore) and the colourful murderplatforming of Hets. Now he's back with a new studio, named Art in Heart, and a new load of colourful death. Gonner [official site] is a roguelikelike that wants to make you go "awww" from the cuteness and "ugh" from the difficulty. Often at the same time. Something like "uawwgh".
*Clears throat, composes herself*
Please follow me past the break to see Ditto's lovely art in action.
In Gonner we'll be fighting and platforming as Ikk, a cute skeletal creature looking for a trinket that will bring happiness to his one and only friend Sally, a giant landbound whale. Awww. However the journey will see Ikk traverse dark and hostile places, and die. A lot. Ugh. Why can't those creatures understand that it's for a good cause. An awww-worthy cause.
This trailer will show you the wonderful environments the game will generate for you, and the heartless enemies looking to kill you if you so much as lose focus for a second to appreciate the visual design. Uawwwgh.
It looks like Gonner will replace health bars with a mechanic involving Ikk's body parts: once hit, he loses his limbs and has to pick himself up and reassemble himself. If he is hit again before he can do that, he dies. It's certainly an interesting way of allowing the player to make the occasional mistake and not instantly die from it.
There isn't much else to go on at the moment, but you can use the time to explore Ditto's previous works on his itch page. They're all free with a pay-what-you-want option, and they all strike for a similar level of frantic action, which could give you a pretty good indication about whether you'll actually enjoy Gonner.
The Steam page promises a summer 2016 release on Windows and Mac, but the website offers a much more honest "when it's ready."